Bad girls: Why women of Saudi Arabia were allowed to drive
This week it became known that women in Saudi Arabia finally be able to drive a car, and this does not even require the permission of a male guardian. Representatives of the local Foreign Ministry tweeted that this is the first step of many towards equality, and the law itself will begin to work in June 2018. Prior to that, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where a woman driving could get a fine or even be arrested. We understand how local activists fought for the right to drive and who actually forced the authorities to decide on changes.
27 years in the passenger seat
Saudi Arabia is an ultra-conservative and patriarchal kingdom, and all standards of local law are reconciled with Wahhabism, one of the most stringent currents of Islam. That is why they are not ashamed to explain the state ban on driving by saying that this way a woman will more often communicate with men (this is, of course, dangerous and undesirable) and she will certainly have problems with childbirth. Or they simply think that a woman is by nature much more stupid than a man, so that she should be protected from driving for the common good. Needless to say, these arguments contradict both the canons and the secular world, and just common sense.
Local women began to fight for the right to sit behind the wheel in the 90s - then 47 women (some of them had scientific degrees) were driven by cars in an organized motorcade. Because of this, some of them were fired from the position of government officials. In 2011, cybersecurity activist and cyber security consultant Manal al-Shafir was detained because she rode a car twice and reported it on Facebook and Twitter. By the way, Manal also participated in the launch of the most noticeable campaign on this topic on the Internet under the hashtag # Women2Drive, which became known far beyond the kingdom.
Two years later, forty more women violated the ban, and in 2014, activist Lajin al-Hasulul was detained when she tried to cross the border between the UAE and Saudi Arabia by car. Lajin spent 72 days in custody. In general, girls were not punished with extreme harshness — rather, they simply ignored them. The struggle of women in Saudi Arabia behind the wheel was supported by the western community - from the singer MIA, whose video for the song “Bad girls” is dedicated to the ban on driving cars in the kingdom, to Hillary Clinton, EU officials and American women senators who wrote an open letter to the King of Saudi Arabia .
As a result, the struggle for the right to get behind the wheel took 27 years for women in the kingdom, but the country still has to solve a number of problems. Due to gender segregation, it is highly undesirable for women in Saudi Arabia to communicate with unfamiliar men. It turns out that the kingdom will have to think about the female traffic police, which will issue fines and search cars in case of violations. It is unclear and who will teach women to drive and give rights - probably will need avtoinstruktorshi and officials with a new specialization.
Oil and New Deal
It would be naive to believe that the ice was broken because of the sudden attention of the kingdom to human rights standards. Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of oil, which determines the prices of resources and affects the foreign exchange market. And despite the obvious problems with civil rights, developed countries continue to meet with the royal dynasty, cooperate with the kingdom in business, and in general do not particularly focus on the monstrous position of women and homosexuals (the latter can be executed for orientation). Even global business giants prefer to adapt to local rules. The purchasing power of the residents is high, no one wants to lose the benefits, and even McDonald’s is setting up its restaurants so that women, God forbid, do not eat in the presence of unfamiliar men.
Saudi Arabia could continue to exist in a patriarchal vacuum, but in recent years, the kingdom was concerned about the exhaustion of oil fields (they now make up 90% of the country's revenues) and launched the Kingdom Look 2030 program, so that by that time it could get off the oil needle. The Kingdom plans to attract large investments and specialists in technical areas, including resources from Silicon Valley. “No one has yet succeeded in modernizing the economy without attracting expats. The country should become attractive,” said Lloyd Blankfein, general director of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Before the start of reforms, Saudi Arabia, on the contrary, tried to limit the influx of foreign specialists in order to save space for their own. In other words, the law on driving is one of the measures that can make the life of foreigners in the kingdom more familiar.
Moreover, the Saudi activist and scientific worker of Harvard Hala al-Dozari told The Atlantic in an interview that before announcing the law, people close to the authorities phoned the activists and demanded that they not speak out on this topic even positively. “They are trying to pretend that this decision is the king’s grace, and not the result of women's struggle,” al-Dozari said. In her opinion, the power in Saudi Arabia rests on the patriarchal order, and women will never gain complete freedom under the existing dynasty and regime: "In order to improve international relations, the authorities must bring some things back to normal, but not too much degrees to reform the structure that allows them to rule. "
Guardians and the energy of the sun
Saudi Arabia really carries out reforms very carefully, and they, in the opinion of activists, are more like handouts. For example, two years ago, women were allowed to vote and run for municipal elections. Needless to say, the municipalities have very limited powers, there is not a single female minister in the government, and voting booths are divided by gender.
Now the famous guardianship system continues to operate in the kingdom, where many decisions are made for a woman by her brother, father, husband or even son. For a while, women did not even have their own documents - they were written into guardian’s papers, in fact they were powerless, like children. So, a woman still can not rent an apartment, leave the country, get a passport, go to the police or even get married without a man’s signature. True, this year women were finally allowed to study in state institutions and visit doctors without the knowledge of the guardian.
Saudi Arabia will have to follow the path of modernization in all senses - oil prices are falling, and technology and ethical standards of corporations do not stand still. The kingdom already produces energy from the sun and wind, trying to adapt to changing economic conditions. However, it is not clear how far the dynasty can go in its desire to please the global world, and whether women will get equal rights with men in the absence of democracy.
Cover:kanchitdon - stock.adobe.com
